Today in 1981 John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan. The untold story, the one never released to the press, follows: Hinckley was Reagan’s jelly bean dealer, and Reagan owed Hinckley big time. After repeated attempts to retrieve payments for three metric tons of jelly beans, Hinckley went to Reagan in person about a week before the shootings, at which point Reagan not only beat Hinckley mercilessly (or what would pass for a merciless beating given by a 70 year-old), he had the secret service forcibly remove his shoes. Hinckley was then forced to leave across a damp,White House lawn in his socks. A week later, Hinckley retaliated.

I’m not trying to make light of the Three Mile Island accident, but it really sounds like a porn title akin to the mile-high club. Having said that, I hope someone has made a Three Mile Island themed porno. I won’t watch it; just knowing that someone has made it is enough.

In highschool, my freshman social studies class tasked us with a report on an artist, accompanied by a presentation as the artist. One of my classmates “Maggie” reported on Janis Joplin, and for her presentation, wore some makeup (which I do not believe JJ did, but my report was on Marcel Duchamp, so what do I know). When my friend “Steve” saw that Maggie wore makeup, he said, intending some light-hearted jest, “Ugh! What’d you do to your face?!”. Maggie cried for the remainder of the class (the teacher let her present the next day) as Steve tried to apologize. It was not very productive in social studies that day.

It took me years to realize that Lewis and Clark were separate people from Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Let me justify this past silliness of mine: first, the show Lois and Clark starring Terri Hatcher and Dean Kane was on around the time I began to hear mention of Lewis and Clark. Second, my mom’s name is Lois, but people would for some reason err and call her Lewis, so I thought that was a common mispronunciation. I was fortunate enough to have never said anything about my ignorance publicly until now. Oh, whoops.

Growing up in the 90s, I heard much hullabaloo about Wayne Gretzky, even as one who did not watch sports. He was a guest star on Saturday Night Live, for example, and he was frequently referenced in general. Even now Mr. Gretzky pervades my non athletic life, for I recently learned that he is the one quoted as saying “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Why do you stalk me, Wayne Gretzky?!

My friends and I broke out the Nintendo 64 the other day and played Mario Kart, and we realized that that game really holds up. Despite the N64’s aggressively impractical three pronged controller, Mario Kart 64 is very easy to slip right back into, as if it were any given Saturday in 1997. I learned that, perhaps because of my nihilistic tendencies that increase with my old age, I enjoyed getting into last place, for that is when you get the best power-ups, like the lightening bolt and the spike shell. That way, you not only get to ruin everyone else’s fun, but you may yourself get to first place. I guess I’m more of a sociopath than a nihilist.

Beware the Ides of March! Today is the day in 44BC when a bunch of senators betrayed Julius Caesar, quite literally stabbing him in the back, and probably all over his body. The HBO series Rome depicted this gory scene very well, the senators spilling so much blood from Caesar that they started slipping like Crocodile Mile™.